Jodi

TWO OF THEM

Cooking and canning, them things is right like second nature to me. I can make somethin’ in my kitchen easy as pie—even though Grandma’s hand-rolled, homemade pies ain’t easy. But writing down all them steps, remembering all the ingredients, trying to explain something that’s near like breathing to me—it were right harder than I thought. But me and Khaki, we was gonna visit Patrick Zimmerman that day. So I had a taped-up manila envelope all full a’ recipes crammed in my bag with my driver’s license and my first boarding pass.

It’s right funny that I was near grown and you was still such a little thing when you got your first boarding pass scanned. When I told that stranger at the farmer’s market about my cookbook, it felt so damn good I couldn’t stop. It was soft and sweet on my lips like a long kiss or a cool bite of an ice cream cone. It was still like I told Buddy, though. I was scareder than a weed in a field a’ Roundup. I was so used to scraping by, not doing nothing too good or right, that I was afraid I’d do this one thing and it’d be too hard to go back to being so ordinary.

But that Khaki, she said, “Oh, honey, I’ll teach you everything I know. Getting what you want isn’t about anything more than being totally certain. If you’re absolutely sure that what you’re fighting for is the right thing, then there isn’t anyone in the world who can stop you.”

I weren’t sure if that was true or not. I was one of them girls so full a’ doubt I weren’t sure I’d ever do nothing good. But that day, looking out the airplane window in the outfit that Khaki give me, I thought she just might be right: Maybe I could have my jam and eat it too.

Me and Khaki and Graham, we’d gone ’round and ’round about us all spending the weekend together, if that was all right for you. We’d talked to our social worker and some therapy lady and read all over the Internet. Graham finally put his foot down right hard—which he don’t do often when it comes to Khaki. “This is absurd. We agreed to do what was right for Carolina, and all this anxiety is what isn’t right for her.”

He was right. Babies, they know when the people around them is wound up.

Graham and Khaki, they acted like being on a plane with two babies and another on the way weren’t nothing. Graham fed you a bottle so I didn’t have to see somebody else being your momma. Khaki and me, we played tic-tac-toe with Alex. But he was so excited over the gum he got to chew to keep his ears from poppin’ he didn’t care about nothin’ else. I woulda been right nervous somebody’d get to crying or something. But Graham and Khaki didn’t act like they was one bit concerned.

I weren’t real sure how I’d take to flying. But being up in the air felt like freedom. Couldn’t nobody get to me or hurt me.

Khaki looked up from the tic-tac-toe board and said, “Now you don’t worry one bit about this meeting. I’ll be there the whole time, and Patrick is about the sweetest thing in the world. What people in the South say about Yankees doesn’t pertain to him.”

I nodded, but I’m sure I was right green.

Khaki smiled real reassuring. “And this is only a preliminary meeting. So we shouldn’t get our hopes up that they are going to buy the book.” She squeezed my hand. “And that’s a good thing because if you change your mind you don’t have to do it.” She paused, and whispered, “But I probably don’t have to tell you that I think you should!”

That stewardess in her uniform, she said we landed in New York. But it might as well’ve been Mars for how different everything looked. I ain’t never seen nothin’ besides trailer parks and fields and them regular buildings downtown, so skyscrapers and all kinds a’ people all crowded on the street, it were right different looking. I was fixing to get scared, but Khaki, she held my hand the whole time. I said, “You do know you’re not my momma, right?”

“For Lord’s sake, Jodi, I’m scarcely old enough to be your big sister.” She winked.

Graham, he told me one time that it didn’t make no difference that Khaki had moved to New York and married somebody else. He knew sure as rain makes the grass grow that they’d be together.

“Khaki has been mothering since she could talk,” he said. “I knew we’d need at least five bedrooms because Khaki having a bunch of babies is just like one of those hogs down at her daddy’s having them. It’s only natural.”

Khaki had to go to a meeting, so Graham and me, we took you and Alex to get some “barbecue.” Now, listen here, New York may know fashion designers and art, but they don’t know pork. I whispered over to Graham, “Is it just me or do our gas stations serve better barbecue than this?”

He laughed. “Maybe we should face facts that when we’re in Manhattan, it’s wiser to eat as the Manhattanites do.”

I didn’t have a dern clue what Manhattanites ate, but I knew damn well it weren’t this.

We were quiet for a second, and he said, “So, Jodi, do you really want to do this cookbook or is my wife pushing you into it?”

I shrugged. “Thinkin’ ’bout my name being on a bookshelf gives me butterflies. But I’m gonna walk in that big-city office, and they’ll see right quick I’m some trailer-park hick from nowhere, North Carolina, and tell me to leave.”

Graham wiped his mouth and laughed.

“What?”

“Just the idea of someone trying to tell Khaki to leave anywhere. I can envision two guards, one holding her arms, and one holding her feet, her kicking those fancy shoes she wears, you following behind trying to calm her down.”

I laughed too.

He said, “I want you to realize that you’re smart and you’re young and you can do anything you want to do, whether this is it or not.”

“I think I might actually like to do the cookbook.” I smiled. “Seems like a real nice way to remember Grandma, don’t it?”

A real fine mist gathered in Graham’s eyes. “It really does. But just so you know, cookbook or no, she would be so proud of you she wouldn’t know what to do.”

It made me feel so good I weren’t even real nervous walking into Patrick Zimmerman’s office.

Patrick, he smiled at me real cute, all dimples and teeth under his gray hair. It made him look right young. Then he said, “So, I hear you’re the canning queen of the South.”

I couldn’t believe how brave and normal it sounded when I answered him right back like it weren’t nothing. “Don’t forget picklin’ and jammin’ too.”

He laughed, looked at Khaki and said, “Look out, world; there’re two of them.”

I ain’t never thought of myself like Khaki before, all strong and brave. But hearing him say that, it was near like when Daddy used to tell me I was his best girl. And, for the first time since giving you up, it made me feel like I was worth something again.